Prior to his election, he was Deputy Leader of the London Borough of Redbridge and Cabinet Member for Health and Wellbeing. He remained a Labour councillor for Aldborough Ward until May 2018.

Streeting's earlier career was in the voluntary sector, most recently as Head of Education at Stonewall, where he led their Education for All campaign to tackle homophobia in schools. He was previously Chief Executive of the Helena Kennedy Foundation, an educational charity that promotes access to higher education to students from further education colleges through bursaries, mentoring and work placements. He is a former National President of the National Union of Students (NUS) in the United Kingdom.

Streeting was elected as NUS President in April 2008 as a candidate from Labour Students, with the support of the Union of Jewish Students.[2] He had been a member of the NUS National Executive Committee since 2005, having previously held the post of Vice-President (Education) from 2006 to 2008. In April 2009, he was elected to a second term.

As Vice-President of the NUS, Streeting was a strong proponent of his predecessor Gemma Tumelty's proposed reforms to the NUS governance structures, which had been denounced and narrowly defeated by many left-wing groups in NUS as an attack on NUS democracy.[3] His election was reported by The Guardian as "a move that will lend weight to the fight to modernise the union",[4] and within seven months of taking office, revised reform proposals were submitted, passed and ratified by two extraordinary conferences to adopt the new constitution.[citation needed] Critics have argued, however, that the conferences were undemocratic, with a significant number of delegates not having been elected by cross-campus ballot. A large proportion of FE colleges were also unable to attend.[citation needed]

He was a leading figure in efforts to change the NUS's position on higher education funding in advance of the government's 2009/10 independent review of higher education funding in England.[5]

In a July 2010 by-election, Streeting was elected as a Labour councillor for the Chadwell ward on Redbridge London Borough Council. He held the seat for Labour by 220 votes, winning with 31.5% of the vote (a fall of 1.4% for Labour in the ward) on a 25.5% turnout (a fall of 34.5% in turnout).[8][9] The by-election had been triggered by a previous Labour candidate having been elected two months earlier when he was ineligible to serve on the council.[10] As a result of his election, Streeting gave up his job as a public sector consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), because Redbridge Council was a "current audit client" of the firm; this forced him to choose between keeping his job or forcing a second by-election.[11]

In 2010, shortly after leaving PwC, Streeting was appointed as Head of Policy and Strategic Communications for Oona King's unsuccessful bid to win the Labour Party's nomination to be its candidate in the 2012 London Mayoral election.[12]

Streeting was elected as Deputy Leader of the Labour Group in October 2011, 15 months after his election as a Redbridge councillor.[13] In 2014, he contested the Aldborough ward on Redbridge Council, winning 2,100 votes and defeating Conservative opponent Ruth Clark.

At a public meeting of the Redbridge Citizens' Assembly on 6 May 2014, Cllr Streeting on behalf of his group promised that, if elected, he would not reduce the level of Council Tax Support provided to low-income working-age residents. Once elected, the Labour council cut the level of Support, so as to treble from April 2016 the amount of Council Tax paid by supported residents; the council made a further reduction from April 2017, and made a third reduction from April 2018.[14][15][16][17]

He was appointed Deputy Leader of the council in May 2014, shortly after the Labour group took control with a majority in the local elections.[18][19] He resigned the latter in May 2015, shortly after being elected Member of Parliament for Ilford North.[20] Whilst he remained a backbench councillor following his election to Parliament he chose not to claim his allowance from Redbridge Council.[21] Streeting ceased to be a member of the council on Monday 7 May 2018.

Streeting is a vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Antisemitism.[28] He has accused Corbyn of a "flat-footed and lackadaisical attitude" to tackling antisemitism which is "simply unacceptable".[29] Ilford North's Jewish community is the third-largest in the UK, amounting to about 4,000 people. Marcus Dysch of The Jewish Chronicle believed Streeting's majority of 589, in one of the few seats where the Jewish vote might be decisive, was vulnerable to his Conservative opponent Lee Scott who is Jewish.[30][31] Instead, at the 2017 election, Wes Streeting retained the seat, defeating Scott (who came second) and increasing his majority to 9,639.

Streeting is a co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims. In September 2018 he held the last in a series of London-wide consultations to create a working definition of Islamophobia.[32] Ilford North constituency has a Muslim population of 18,000.[33]

Streeting is a supporter of the People's Vote, a campaign group calling for a public vote on the final Brexit deal between the UK and the European Union.[34]